145: Star Trek TOS Season 1, “The Enemy Within"

https://youtu.be/cT7L9Bqp4Jo

Matt and Sean talk about how splitting Captain Kirk into two leads to some awkward situations, but is it still compelling TV?

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Matt Ferrell

Host of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, Still TBD, and Trek in Time podcasts

Host

Sean Ferrell 🐨

Co-host of Still TBD and Trek in Time Podcasts

What is Trek In Time?

Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.

In this episode of Trek in Time, we're talking about how to accept some ugly truths. That's right, we're talking about Star Trek, the original series, season one, The Enemy Within. This is episode number five in broadcast order. But it was number five in production order.

What? Synergy me.

What? Welcome, everybody, to Trek in Time, where we're watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological stardate order.

We're also taking a look at the time of original broadcast. We have finally reached the original series, which means we're also talking about the 1960s. And who are we? I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi. I write some stuff for kids. And with me, as always, is my brother, Matt. He's that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech.

And it's impact on our lives. And Matt, how are you doing today? Did you remember to watch the right episode? Doing great.

It's beautiful out. I did watch the right episode. I did. I swear to God, I did, but I was going to say it's a beautiful, beautiful day. I'd, I wish I could be podcasting from outside right now.

Well, other than the fact that there would be too much ambient noise and you wouldn't be able to see us clearly, why aren't we podcasting from outside? That's the question. That's a very good question. Do a live. Episode at some point where we can be drinking Mai Tais and sunning ourselves on a beach. As we usually do, we like to Do we sun our Do we sun ourselves though, Sean?

Well, by sun ourselves, I mean hide behind a blanket. You don't That's, that's what I meant. Yes, there you go. We are a pale people. Before we get into our conversation about this episode, The Enemy Within, we always like to revisit the comments from our previous episodes. So Matt, what have you found for us today?

Got a few good ones. Uh, we have one from Dan Sims who wrote, Pretty wild that this was progressive for the time. Sure. I'm glad it's gotten better, but far from perfect yet. Uh, sadly, some places have started going backwards. Uh, this was in reference, of course, to the Mudd's Women episode, which was, oh boy, a lot of misogyny going on.

Um, yeah. Uh, then following up on that theme, we had from PaleGhost69, this episode had more layers of cringe than a soggy onion. Best part was Spock reacting to and observing the effects on the crew. I was half expecting them to be secretly Orion slave girls with the way all the men started drooling. I hadn't thought of that because they've set up that the Orion slave girls are all like, can like, get men under their spell.

Yet these were just women. It was never explained why men just lost their minds around her.

That was the,

that's right. And then, uh, we have comments, uh, from oldtrekkie23. This is off topic. And this is in reference to when I had mentioned some of the bad writing, and it was very Roddenberry, which was also very Next Generation from Season 1 and 2.

And Old Trekkie wrote, Off topic, in fairness to the Next Generation, Season 1 and 2, there was a writer's strike, and they were remaking previous Star Trek scripts as they were allowed to by the Writers Guild. That said, Roddenberry was more prevalent, and that was a problem. Now, back to Roddenberry's previous issues.

Thank you for pointing that out, old, old Trekkie. Yeah, it is worth remembering, and I, I, I also find this fascinating, there's, there's a good book out there called, uh, Star Trek II, Star Trek Phase II, I believe that's what it's called. Uh huh. Which takes a look at The proposed follow up series, Paramount, at one point was like, maybe we should start our own network and we could use the Star Trek as the franchise to launch it, if that sounds familiar.

That's exactly what happened when they launched UPN and they had Star Trek Voyager as their premiere show. Uh, they talked about doing that. In the 1970s, originally, they wrote a bunch of scripts, they did, they did a ton of work, and it ended up not going anywhere, except into a vault. And then later, when they resurfaced after the movies, they went with Star Trek the motion picture.

Instead, they repurposed one of the scripts that they wrote for the show, turning it into Star Trek the motion picture. Then, of course, the movies all started taking place. And then the next generation emerged. They then pulled those scripts out of mothballs and they repurposed a lot of them to create the scripts for the next generation programming.

Um, it is deeply embedded in the original Star Trek DNA of Roddenberry. Um, one of the holdovers was the character of Dekker in the original. Motion picture was effectively Riker and there was dynamic that they were looking for the older captain with the younger executive officer. And that would have been Shatner playing off against a younger actor who would have been his new, his new number one.

Um, and it's interesting to think about the idea of Kirk as a mentor, Kirk as an older mentor. It would have been a different take on the character and it might have shaped the character in really, really unique ways as opposed to what did happen, which was the motion pictures largely leaned into Kirk is incorrigible and never really Mellowed from his space cowboy sort of persona.

So it's interesting to think about what it could could have been if, if Paramount had decided to try that earlier.

So there's one more comment from Mark Loveless who wrote, and this is in reference to your wrong answers only what the next episode is about. Next episode is the Enemy With Inn I N N.

Spelling is wrong on Wikipedia. This is an episode about how the Enterprise crew stays at a Hampton Inn and has a terrible experience and argues with the night manager on duty. And it ends, of course, with a one star review.

I like that a lot. Now, I kind of wish that that episode did exist. I'd like to see Spock going. Captain, these are not hospital corners on this bit.

That's very funny. Thank you for that.

That noise, the only one thing, it's the read alert, of course, which means it's time for Matt to tackle. Well, it's not a Wikipedia description. It's more of an IMDB description. So Matt, take it away. Okay,

alright. While beaming back aboard the Enterprise, a transporter malfunction results in two vastly different Captain Kirk's being beamed aboard.

His personality has, in effect, been split into two. One Captain Kirk is weak and indecisive. Overcautious is making, is making an effort to Overcautious in making any kind of decision. The other is a paranoid, mean spirited, and violent man who likes to swill brandy and force himself on female crew members.

Meanwhile, as Scotty struggles to repair the transporter, the landing party is stuck on the planet below with temperatures falling rapidly. Only when the captain is able to accept and embrace the need for each half can he convince both parts of himself to enter the transporter and be reunified, thereby becoming whole and proving the transporter repaired and is repaired enough to rescue the marooned crewman.

This episode, as I mentioned before, is episode number five in both production and broadcast. It's directed by Leo Penn, written by Richard Matheson, and the name Richard Matheson should be familiar to people. He is that Richard Matheson. He wrote I Am Legend, amongst other numerous novels and short stories.

He was a prolific and creative writer. And this episode, I think, I was impressed given its early status in the run. I'll be honest, there is a certain point where the order of episodes of Star Trek, I wasn't largely aware of it. They all kind of were a giant ball of Star Trek. That you could pull them out at random and it was in order enough.

And seeing this episode this early in the series really kind of stood out to me as like, holy cow, they were really like kind of knocking it out of the park. This and Corbomite Maneuver, very close to each other. Uh, I found it very impressive. And when I saw Richard Matheson's name on the screen, I was like, of course he he's one of those guys who really knows what he's doing when it comes to characterization and taught writing.

Our main cast, as usual, is William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Majel Barrett, and Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand. She makes an appearance in this one, which is a kind of critical appearance, but unfortunately, it kind of continues the misogyny we've seen from the previous episode, in the fact that it is a sexual assault treated as character development for Captain Kirk.

As opposed to, oh my God, Janice Rand was just sexually assaulted. Also on call are Jim Goodwin. You asked previously, Matt, would we ever see Ferrell again? We do. Ferrell makes an appearance behind the con on this episode. Also in the episode, Edward Madden as Fisher, Eddie Paskey as Connors, Garland Thompson as Wilson, Don Eitner.

Was the photo double or so in those moments when you see two Kirk's, it was, it was Mr. Eitner, this episode originally aired on October 6th, 1966. And the world at that time should be a little familiar for regular viewers and listeners as many of the top programming and music that we are hearing this week.

Well, we've heard them before in previous weeks. The number one song, Cherish, by The Association, and the number one film, Dr Zhivago. We've mentioned both of those previously. And in the Nielsen ratings, we're of course taking a look at Nielsen as the main arbiter as opposed to streaming. or downloads in 1966.

Those would have gotten you a raised eyebrow and a question of what are you talking about. Series 1 of Star Trek got a 12 rating in the Nielsen's and compared to the top shows like Bonanza and Red Skelton Hour, which were receiving 29 and 28 respectively, it gives you a sense of where they fell in the order of the rankings.

This week, at number four, we find The Lucy Show, which is not I Love Lucy, it is the 1962 1968 Return to Television by Lucille Ball, who at that point had divorced Desi Arnaz, And I found this an interesting anecdote about her return in 1962, Desilu Productions was scrambling. It was struggling financially, and it was on the verge of collapse.

Somebody within Desilu suggested that if Lucy were to return to television, For just one year, it would provide enough money for them to be able to continue and potentially gain leverage to get CBS to show other programming. Lucy, reluctantly, agreed at not only the behest of the people who worked at Desilu, but also Desi Arnaz.

Arnaz actually said to her, if you can recapture some of what we did on I Love Lucy, I think it's a good idea for you to do it. And they used it as an opportunity to leverage other properties that Desilu had to get them on television. It ended up being on the air for six years. It was a return of not only Lucille Ball, but Vivian Vance, who played Ethel from the original I Love Lucy show.

She returned as well as a friend to the new Lucy in the new Lucy show. And she would go on to, um, continue with this relationship with Lucille Ball until her death in the 70s. The two of them became quite the pairing. And the show's success was a big reason for why Star Trek would end up on the air, because by the time Star Trek was coming around in 1966, the Lucy show was still on the air, and she had regained her footing, as far as like Desilu Studios was concerned, to be able to get a show onto CBS.

So I think that it's fitting that we're seeing her program here at the number four spot. And the most popular programming according to the Nielsen ratings in 1966. And in the news, lots of items that had to do with the ongoing debate in New York state around potential for increasing tax rates. It is the year in 1966, before a

gubernatorial election and Nelson Rockefeller at this point was promising voters that there would be no new taxes this year, but he wouldn't say anything the following year. Little bit of a note as well about the Orioles beating the Dodgers 5 2 as the World Series opens. The Orioles would go on in four games to win the World Series.

Defeating a winless in the series, Dodgers. On now to our discussion about this episode, The Enemy Within. As Matt mentioned in his lovely reading of the synopsis, we have twinning of Captain Kirk. We have a marooned crew on a planet with a plummeting temperature. And one thing that the synopsis doesn't mention, Matt, can you guess what's missing from the synopsis?

If you're

thinking

Well, Sulu's missing, but Well, no, he's missing, but he's mentioned. But what's missing in the synopsis? If you're thinking an adorable dog in a little costume, that's right. We have an adorable dog in a little costume aboard the ship. So we have the Jekyll and Hyde aspect. We have the marooned crew aspect.

And then we have the Like all the shenanigans aboard the ship aspect, the back and forth between Kirk's, the Doctor, Spock, Scotty, where would you like to enter our discussion in this episode?

Oh man, before I give you the answer, I just got to say my first note from watching this episode was That poor dog.

Like, Verily was moving around. It was almost always being held by somebody. He looked, he looked so miserable in that costume. I'd be willing to

bet the dog couldn't walk in that costume. I bet it, I bet it couldn't walk. And I also thought, boy, they needed a dog that was so docile as to not. Put up a fight about anything and that poor thing, just like, I guess this is my life now, I'm like, this is what I do now.

And when they put it down on the transporter at the end, next to what is very clearly a stuffed toy. Like, they put the aggressive, inoculated one down, and it's clearly a stuffed animal, and they put the dog next to it, I'm sorry, it's an old trope in television, don't work with children or animals because they steal the attention.

It's true. I was watching that dog when they put it down on the transporter. It turns and begins to sniff. The little stuffed animal next to it. Very clearly, like, what is this thing? Is this for me? What is it? Why is it wearing the same outfit I am? This is awkward. I thought I was wearing something very unique.

Uh, so yes, the little adorable dog is a key component of the show, mainly as the canary in the coal mine. Will the reunification work? It kind of works, but the poor thing dies. So that puts tension back into the, into the episode. Why don't we start with the, go ahead. I was going to say, why don't you pick, I was going to say, why don't you pick where you want to start?

Why don't we start with the Jekyll and Hyde aspect, which is, it's an old trope. All right. It, I, I mean, just referring to Jekyll and Hyde, that even, that isn't even the origin of this kind of like a person divided against themselves sort of investigation, even something like Cain and Abel. At its base is a investigation of a unified whole.

These are two brothers who should be united. And what do they do? One of them murders the other. And it is this kind of tension, uh, at play. I find it interesting that when Matheson wrote this, this screenplay, this teleplay, he had none of the crew is trapped on the planet. It was entirely Kirk is duplicated and it all takes place aboard the ship and they added the marooned crew to add some tension and they did it as a, in some reshoots.

Which I find fascinating. I'm looking forward to hearing from you if you think that that kind of stood out or not. The, the tension that comes out of the duplication is, I think, very, very broad. It is a very simplified version of, of this kind of duplication storyline. Um, Dark Side, Light Side, uh, Good, Evil, it's all of those at play.

But I found myself falling into the narrative completely. And I found all of the investigations into what this meant as far as where does command come from. That's the narrowest lens in the episode. It stops being about what does it mean to be a human and what does it mean to be a commander, what does it mean to be in charge and making that the lens I think really ratchets up the interest in the investigation by pointing out things like the good side is not Fearful.

There was a thing in the synopsis. I revised the synopsis a little bit to clear it up a little bit. And there was an element of the synopsis as originally written on IMDB that I disagreed with. It said that the good side of Kirk is fearful. And I did not agree with that. They make a point in the episode saying you aren't scared by any of this.

The fearful side. is the darker side. He starts off as paranoid the moment he emerges. The depiction of it, I think, is fascinating. Go ahead.

I was going to say that the, this is to me, the weakest part of this story is they, they hammered home numerous times that the monster is needed in you to be a good commander, a good leader, which one, I don't agree with that argument at all.

I think that's a really. To be a leader, you have to be an ass. Um, I don't buy that in the slightest. So that was rubbing me the wrong way. But the fact they kept hitting on that again and again, and they've really never talked about how the positive side outweighs the negative side and how it balances it out.

Until that moment, and it was just this, it was like, okay, you hammered home how the monster is essential to be a good commander, like five times in my face. Like you were just completely blunt about it. And then it's this really subtle, almost aside kind of comment about how, Hey, you weren't afraid. He's afraid.

And it was like, it wasn't quite the M night Shyamalan moment. It was such a, it happened so quickly and went by it. Like it may have not. hit you. And it definitely didn't resonate as in your face as all the other mentions about him being a monster and being essential. So to me, it didn't feel like they were balanced in how they discussed the two sides and how they worked together and what made him a strong commander wasn't just being a jerk.

It was also his intellect and his being able to override those instincts is what makes him a great leader and a great person and a great human being. And it's like, that was all kind of like, downplayed way too much to me. So to me, it felt very kind of like it undercut the message because it was not.

And to be clear, I'm not saying they had to talk about that five times equal to five times they talked about the negative. It was like that you could have talked about just the once, but it could have been a more, um, drawn out conversation. It could have been a more pointed thing that was like really in your face about it, um, to kind of help balance out all the other stuff.

Uh, I don't know if you felt the same way, but for me, it was just kind of like a, Oh man, you didn't like really talk about the positive side of him too much.

I thought, I thought it was, I actually disagree with you. I thought it was pretty balanced and I'm interested for our listeners and viewers jump in the comments.

And do you agree with Matt? You felt like it was kind of like flogging the dark side too much. I took it as There was the balance inherent in the fact that the screen presentation, the visual presentation, makes it clear that the civilized side of him, the, and that, that's one of the things I think the episode wrestles with.

Nicely is what is the terminology here? Spock comes very, very close to saying these labels are not enough. We don't have terminology that actually can apply here because human language is built around the context of good and evil. But that's more about, that's more applicable to acts as opposed to the inherent nature of a being.

And Spock comes very close to saying like these terminology is almost too simplistic to actually define what we're looking at because the, it's not necessarily the evil side, it's the passionate side. And if you were to say, well, the passionate side is required for leadership, that is easier to digest.

than saying it's the anger it's the lust it's the like they they put a little bit of the negative terminology in the forefront but i feel like what they were getting to was still obvious In how it was being talked about and presented in a way that it was like, it's not good and evil. It is passion versus reason.

It is compassion and empathy versus self interest and drive. It is the visuals when the darker side emerges on the transporter platform. The acting in this, I think it's dated, it's 1966 acting. But I think Shatner does a really great job in this episode. In presenting these two sides, I love that when, and it's very, to me, very theater, very theater acting.

When he emerges and he goes and he, he effectively caresses the transporter console. And as I was watching that, I was like, it's this lustful need to possess the ship. It is, that is his moment of just like, you're mine. You are my ship. And it is very, very, uh, passionate and. And feels misplaced. Like, you shouldn't be, like, about a ship, but it is a component of his captaincy.

Kirk's drive to, this is my ship, you will not take this away from me, is presented again and again through the series, and I think it, it's on display here. What about the, like, let's talk about the hardest part of the show to digest, to put up with. Um, the sexual assault, which is, like, if it continues, it's headed toward rape, it is a dark use of a terrible thing when sexual assault and rape is used to demonstrate character development of the perpetrator, that is Awful.

So this aspect of this episode stands out like a really, really bad terrain for the episode for me.

Yeah. I would say if you take the assault scene on its own, I thought it was pretty. It's impressively done. Like what they were showing and it was like shocking and it was like, Oh my God, I was fearing for her life and all that kind of stuff.

So it did all hit all the right notes for in isolation, but the way that was leveraged after that was this unintentional gaslighting of her that was just, what are you doing? The interrogation scene with her and like the captain getting in her face. It's like, whoa, you just have the guy who did the sexual assault like right in her face.

It's like, it didn't, it was just, there's so much wrong with how every scene after that handled

it. Every scene after that, including right up to the To the Ts at the end. It's Spock saying Wink. Wink. Yeah. Captain's an interesting man, isn't he? Like, we all know you're actually, you kinda like that side of him, like that side, right?

And it's just like, oh boy, that's rough to see. And none of that needed to be there. I do agree with you like the, the depiction of the attack itself. Um, I have to imagine for 1966 that would've been really pushing it. And for 2024, I feel like you don't see that without a disclaimer at the beginning of the program or movie, like warning, this trigger warning, this has got content in it that might, might be trouble for some people to sit through.

Well acted by both of them, I thought, and I agree with you, it's the fallout from the scene, the interrogation in the, in the medical bay and then the final conversations and every time that, that Kirk passes her, I feel like the actress was, as, uh, Yeoman Rand was really doing the best she could with a script that forced her to sit there and deal with this, but she was acting very, very clearly uncomfortable.

In a way that didn't go with what words were being said. And I feel like she as an actress was really hitting it on the head where she was like, I got to get out of this ship. I can't be this guy's yeoman anymore. That would have been the real ending. Like. Yeoman Rand would have been put in, would have put in a transfer request.

And I feel like, yeah, this show is being made in 2024. I

did want to say something about her. Um, the way it was all handled after the fact, one of the things that kind of made me very frustrated, confused, it kind of links into my original statement on like, they emphasized heavily some things and not enough on others.

Uh, they also seem to kind of contort things to make The plot, try to make sense, uh, they bring the dog up and it's split. They know the transporter split the dog and they say, what would happen if it happened to a human? And then she gets assaulted. And then they're in there interrogating her, questioning her about it, and the captain's saying that I didn't do that, I didn't do that, and they're like, are you sure it was the captain, are you sure it's the captain, and my first thought was, these are the best of the best of Starfleet, and they can't put two and two together when they already know, hey, the transporter created Two dogs, and the, and Kirk came up around the same time, so, uh, she's saying Kirk assaulted her.

There's another Kirk on board. It's like, they would have figured that out. Do you want to know? And it was, to me, how long it kept stringing out was just like, dear God, it makes them look like the stupidest buffoons in the space, in the galaxy. It was just like, what is happening right now? This makes no sense.

It, it, it really undercut. The thing, the whole message of the entire episode. And I'm assuming it has to do with the reshoots.

I don't know how much it would sit on the reshoot, but my headcanon is for this. That everybody on the ship didn't realize that in 20th Century Earth, there was an editor who decided for pacing that that one scene where Scotty informs them about the dog, was actually moved.

If you move that one scene to after the Medical Bay scene, the timing goes Rand is attacked, The Captain and Spock talk and then he, Spock accompanies Kirk to the lift. If instead of going to see Scotty, they had gone to the medical bay, they would have been talking to her and saying, that's not me. I didn't do anything to you.

And then they would have been called by Scotty. We got to show you something at the transporter. He would have gone to the transporter because when he's talking to Rand, he says, to Spock. I was in my cabin resting after you left me. The dialogue doesn't actually tie up in the way it's broadcast. It didn't actually create a straight line, but if you move that one scene to later, it does line up.

So I think what happened is that for pacing, somebody decided we got to move this scene earlier. Because then it'll do something for us. I think there may have been

some. It came to me, it came to me as it wasn't accidental. It's like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised if you're right, but it may have been a producer or somebody saying, this will create more tension for the viewer to be a step ahead of the crew.

And it was like, you're not just a step ahead of the crew. You're like, An entire race ahead of the crew and you lap them five times. I don't know

that I agree with you that somebody would have said, let's do it to ratchet up tension. I think mainly because the scene with Spock ends with, or the scene with the discussion ends with a line from Spock where he says, the only answer is you've got an imposter on board.

And at this point. All they know is that the transporter, if, if I'm right, where that scene should have been placed originally, what they would know at that point is the transporter is duplicating people. Not that it is an inherently necessary part of you. And so you end up with Spock saying something that if it had been moved merely for let's ratchet up tension.

I don't know that a producer would say, let's do that for tension. I think somebody, I think it just feels like it's more of a pacing issue for commercial breaks. Like, there was something about timing, maybe, where they were like, We need a shorter scene earlier so that we can do this with a commercial.

Like, somebody somewhere did something, um, that ends up creating exactly what you described. I saw it too, but in my head, I'm able to remember the show as, I just swapped those two scenes, and it all makes sense. But

the problem is, you can't do that. It's like, that's not the text that they gave us. They gave us a horrible piece of text.

Uh, certain things about the Marooned team that I, I'm curious just to take, uh, Matheson's perspective. He felt like it was completely unnecessary to have the crew in danger. I don't know that I agree with him. Um, how do you feel about like the placement, not the details of what they go through, but the existence of crewmen on the planet and the temperatures are plummeting?

Okay. I kind of agree with Matheson and I kind of don't. And the reason I kind of don't is I liked the added tension. It created, it added a clock. There's a clock ticking and it makes it urgent that not only do they have to figure out what happened to the, they have to figure out what happened to the captain before they can safely beam everybody up.

So it puts this whole counter on everything. That was great. In theory, but the way they executed it, I think was awful and completely unnecessary because kind of like my comment about like, wow, they look like the biggest buffoons in space. I didn't completely understand why they had to wait as long as they did to beam everybody up.

Two, there's this thing called a shuttle that becomes very common in the future and watching it now. In hindsight, it's kind of like, well, that's idiotic that they all have shuttles. At the time, I understand they probably didn't have a shuttle in, in theory or anything. So I get that. But the problem I'm having, they beam the dog, they do the experiment with the dog to beam it down, beam it into the memory and then pull it back out and reunite it.

And it fails and the dog's dead. And they're like, Oh no. Well, it's like what they've, what they've already established at that moment. The transporter is fixed. It's no longer going to split people. They fixed that problem. What they're trying to solve now is reunifying somebody that was split. So they know they can beam everybody back up again because they fixed the issue that caused the split, but yet they don't.

They wait until Kirk gets reunified to turn on them and go get the crew up. And it was like, that to me was a massive like, what the hell is happening right now? This was completely unnecessary. If they hadn't done that, I think, I think I agree with that. Having that ticking clock on the surface is a nice addition, but it's the way they executed it and the what the hell is happening aspect that I had.

Uh, because of the dog scene, um, I, I, I just didn't think it was necessary because of the, what the way they actually wrote

it, I thought it was pretty bad. It's interesting that you say that because I'm, I'm discovering, and this has happened before where we've disagreed about an episode, but it's usually I'm on the side of just like, what, that's the phasers are coming out of the photon.

you know, tubes. Uh, I'm usually that one. And you're usually a lot more forgiving than I am. Oh

no, Sean, I'm not, this is not photons coming out of the phaser tubes. This is just. Logic. They explicitly said, we figured out what caused the problem. We think we know how to reunify these dogs again. So they did it.

That means they solved the issue that split it in the first place, which means you could beam people all over the

place. They didn't know that. They thought they had a fix on the transporter. They weren't sure if the transporter or the shock

killed the dog. That's why I'm a I know, but then you could very easily say, let's beam a plant to the surface and bring it back up and see if it's still You could do something with an or something organic and make sure it works safely.

My whole point is, the fact that they weren't doing things that would have clearly proven that it's safe and effective. At that moment, but they had to wait until they did the Kirk thing made no sense. It doesn't make any sense. I don't understand why Scotty has all these tools. We need to double check this stuff with the tools.

They knew exactly what caused the problem. So it's like, I don't understand why they had to wait for Kirk to come back together. For them to beam people up. It doesn't, it doesn't hold water for me at all. It's just like it completely fails the logic test of what they would actually do in that scenario. I,

I didn't have a problem with it.

I, it, I found all of the use of the crew on the planet and the tension and the ticking clock that that was supposed to generate. I thought it all worked. I disagree with Matheson's, uh, assessment that sticking with Kirk alone was sufficient. Um, it's okay to do that in theory, but unless you put that ticking clock and they didn't have enough of a ticking clock to say that I think the ticking clock that he had put into the script was likely the Um, you will die if you're not reunified, but they didn't have enough of a when, like it was unclear as to when, and there was also the sequence of, um, you can end up with the When Kirk is talking to Kirk in the medical bay and convincing him, hold on, you can fight this, you can do this, you can, you can use your mind.

And it gives you that moment of the presence of the two of them together, strengthens the softer one and calms the more aggressive one. Um, it almost presents the, well, they kind of have as much time as they need in a certain way. So it's like, I think the crew on the, the marooned crew needs to, um, be present in the show.

And I also feel like the marooned crew did something really, really great, which it gives Sulu an opportunity to really stretch his character's presence on the screen in really cool ways where you're getting opportunities and of course we have the ability to have hindsight looking back on the long history of Star Trek and to say like, Oh yes, like we know Sulu is the kind of swashbuckly charmer of the show.

He is the one who kind of like a wink and a nod is able to like sway people to his side without being maybe as aggressively brash as Kirk. And in this we see Sulu talking almost every time he's talking. He's making jokes. He's making jokes in a dire situation. And I couldn't help but think, like, wow, they are really demonstrating this moment.

How Sulu, in charge of the away party, is keeping everybody calm, as desperate as their situation is, by saying, I'm going to call room service again. That coffee's taking far too long. I thought, legitimately funny lines. Do you have a long rope you can lower down? Maybe you can just give us a pot of coffee?

And doing that with Kirk sitting in the ready room, looking at the He's looking at the console, listening to Sulu's voice, and you can see in Kirk's face, his dammit, I just need to get these men up off that planet, and he's got clearly a ton of respect for the way that Sulu is managing things on the planet, because he gives him a joke back, and it's a moment of like, You can, you can tell the way it was written and the way it was performed.

It's demonstrating a kind of relationship that would serve the show well. It's no doubt why they knew they should keep, it's okay that they got rid of Ferrell behind the navigator's chair, but you keep Sulu around because he's demonstrating. His place in the show. Also a lot of nice Scotty work in this episode where you get some nice moments between him and Kirk and him and Spock.

But as far as like to go back to the tension of like, why are they waiting for the Kirk of it all? It didn't, it didn't bother me. I think you end up with a moment of the two storylines, the A and the B plot, come together in that final moment of like, I'm reunified, get them off that planet so that we can all go home.

Like, it felt to me like it was avoiding a sort of anti climax, tripping forward of, oh, the crew's back. So now we can fix you and it would have kind of stumbled with a false ending, um, or splitting the energy of the ending into two moments would have been distracting in a, in a way. I,

I think you're mistaking what I'm saying.

I'm not saying that it couldn't have worked. I just think I'm saying the way they executed it. fell flat for me. It would have been very easy for them to be more explicit in the fact that we have to wait till we get Kirk put back together because of XYZ. You know what I mean? Like they never were explicit.

Uh, nothing came through as to why they had to wait until Kirk was back together. It was all implied. Um, and that's where I was kind of like, uh, that's, that was my grumbles. Because my, my, my solution to it is not to bring the crew up first. That's not it. My point was if you can bring up the crew at first, then why even have that storyline at all?

So it's like, that's kind of where I agree with Matheson a little bit. But if they had just made a couple of small tweaks, it's like what they had there worked fine. Um, I did like the ticking clock. It worked a hell of a lot better than the Kirk's gonna die. It's like, cause there was, there was no sense of when it was going to happen.

Um, and they can undercut themselves as you pointed out in the med bay. So for me, it's. Surface stuff, I enjoyed those scenes. It was just literally the, why did you have to wait? Because you weren't explicit to the viewer why you had to wait that long.

I'm confused then. I'm not sure. I'm not sure why you think they didn't have to wait.

The transporter duplicated somebody. They didn't know if it would happen again. Then the transporter was destroyed by aggressive Kirk. And they had to jerry rig a solution. And then they didn't know if the solution would work. So they tested it on the dog. The dog died. And they didn't know if the dog was killed by the transporter or by shock.

So, I'm not sure

where in that sequence No, they weren't No, I remember when I was watching it, it was not that. It was, it was They jerry rigged the transporter and it was working. What, what failed was the merging of the dog and they didn't know if it was the, the, something with the transporter in the merging or if the dog's stress killed it.

That the merging was the question mark. It wasn't the transporter at that point. So for me, that's why it was falling flat for me. And if it wasn't clear. That's why you and I don't agree on this because it's like it wasn't clear. I interpreted it one way, you interpreted it another way because they weren't explicit in what was actually happening in that moment.

It left it open to interpretation.

One final footnote for this episode is A little note, this is the origin of the Vulcan nerve pinch in the scene in the engineering section when Spock was written into the script as having to come out and bonk Kirk on the back of the head with his phaser in order to stop the aggressive Kirk from killing calm Kirk, Nimoy suggested to the director, maybe there would be a better way to do this, and suggested the idea of a Nerve Pinch.

The director was not open to the idea, until Shatner suggested, well, maybe this is how it could look. So, Shatner and Nimoy together created the classic Nerve Pinch for this moment, and of course, that would be Star Trek history. It would continue on for, well, when was the last time you didn't see a Vulcan use this move?

I didn't know that's how that was created. It's a So it was, it was, it was Kirk, it was, um, not Kirk, it was Shatner and Nimoy kind of

figured it out. With Shatner providing the now classic, I don't know, a Vulcan is sneaking up behind me. Ooh.

So viewers, listeners, uh, looking forward to your thoughts about this one, jump into the comments. What do you think about the elements that have created some difference of opinion between Matt and me? Do you feel like they're. Was enough here to say like, Oh, we've got like some clear consistency through the story, or do you feel like there were some gaps in the storytelling the way that Matt seems to have seen it?

Jump into the comments. Don't forget next time we're watching these in Stardate order. So next time it's going to be the Man Trap and please also jump into the comments and let us know what is the Man Trap about and wrong answers only. And please keep it PG 13. 13 clean. Before we sign off, Matt, is there anything you want to share with our listeners or viewers about your main channel?

What do you have coming up in your next episodes?

Yeah. Uh, the next one's a very Star Trek y episode. It's all about generative AI and oh, the controversies around that and should we panic or not?

Very timely. As for me, if you're interested in checking out any information about my books, you can go to SeanFerrell.

com. You can also just go directly to your local bookstore or your bookseller, whether it's Amazon, Barnes Noble, wherever it is you buy your books. My stuff is available there. Don't forget, if you'd like to support the show, Please consider leaving review. Don't forget to subscribe and share it with your friends.

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And we'll talk to you next time.